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Amal Clooney , the wife of the Hollywood actor George Clooney, has played a central role in the request for international arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant by the chief prosecutor Karim Khan on behalf of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Clooney, a prominent British human rights lawyer of Lebanese descent, who specializes in international law and human rights, was on a panel that recommended arrest warrants for leaders of Israel and Hamas.
She is the co-founder with her husband of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, a nonprofit that provides free legal support to victims of human rights abuses.
Clooney's professional past includes representing victims of the Islamic State terror group in the only three trials in the world in which ISIS members were convicted of genocide, as well as in five additional trials that convicted members of the terrorist organization of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"More than four months ago, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court asked me to assist him with evaluating evidence of suspected war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and Gaza. I agreed and joined a panel of international legal experts to undertake this task. Together we have engaged in an extensive process of evidence review and legal analysis including at the International Criminal Court in The Hague," Clooney said in a statement issued by her nonprofit organization.
She said that the panel "unanimously concluded that Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh "have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity."
"I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict. As a human rights lawyer, I will never accept that one child’s life has less value than another’s. I do not accept that any conflict should be beyond the reach of the law, nor that any perpetrator should be above the law. So, I support the historic step that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has taken to bring justice to victims of atrocities in Israel and Palestine," Clooney also said.
"I hope that justice will prevail in a region that has already suffered too much," she concluded.
Clooney has received criticism on social media in recent months for not speaking up about the Israel-Hamas war.